I'll try to keep this short. I was recently messing around on my
phone. At one point I had a nice driving setup. All you had to do was
open Android Auto (for phone screens) and you could do navigation,
read SMS out loud*, and listen to music+. Could, as in past tense.
Big G destroyed it. Shuttered it. Sunset it. Why? I don't know. I
don't think there were any lawsuits. The only explanation comes from
its replacement: Big G Voice assisted driving. It's a system-level
app, or suite of apps. It's dumb. I turn off the Big G app as I just
don't feel comfortable with machines listening to everything I say.
Weird, I know.
It's lamentable that this happened. Android keeps getting worse. And
I'm thinking this may be my last Android phone for a while. I heard
there are Linux-based non-Android phones out there. Then again, I'm
not in any hurry to "upgrade" to a new phone. I've actually dug my
Samsung Galaxy S3 out of mothballs (figuratively) and have been using
it as a media center. It's not half bad, if only for saving the
battery of my daily driver phone. But it shows signs of age running
Android 4.4 when it shipped with Android 4.0. I suspect Touchwiz is
also slowing things down, too: I haven't rooted it as I'm scared of
bricking it.
* not used by me
+ had to be the right app (first GP Music, then VLC after Big G killed
GPM)
